Use First-Person Perspective To Involve the Learner

Hi! Art here, ready to give Lesson Three. If you look at the following images, you might wonder how the heck you can use them:
The shot of Lisa from behind her chair seems really random, right? And a hand cutout doesn’t seem particularly useful when shown alone, right? Actually, using images like these enable you to immerse the learner in the role of the character. Let me explain.

Samples of first person perspective

Below, I provide two sample scenarios. In the first scenario, the character is a customer service representative who must learn how to handle customer complaints. Here, the character is about to pick up a ringing phone. From this perspective, the learner feels like the customer service rep and must determine how to respond to various customer service calls.
The second example is a software training. The character has the software application open on her monitor. In the next slide, you could zoom in on the screen and have the learner perform some tasks in the software. In both examples, the over-the shoulder perspective puts the learner in the role of the character and creates an immersive experience.

How to use hands in your courses

With the image of the hand, you can easily put the learner in the role of the character. Take a look at a screenshot below of a course that I designed for tax consultants. In this example, the consultant must perform an initial visual inspection of Form 1040. Instead of only showing the document, I put the learner in the role of tax consultant by using the first-person perspective. As a result, the learner becomes the character. Exercises on subsequent slides could show a zoomed-in image of the filled-out form in which the learner actually inspects the documents and determines whether the document passes or fails visual inspection.

With hand images, like the character images, you’ll want to have the backgrounds removed. This allows you to creatively construct an immersive experience that is unique to your needs.

Here is a video showing a few uses of hands:

And here is a video showing how to create a handwriting effect with hands

Exercise

Open up the hand images and the shot of the woman from the back. Try dropping in some different props and backgrounds using the first-person perspective. If you would like any feedback on what you have created or would like to share some examples, just post to the comments below or email art@elearningart.com.

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